which chiefly feeds on the eggs found in bird's-nests, and in countries where these are very deep and dark. Its bill is broad and long; when examined, it appears completely covered with branches of nerves in all directions, so that, by groping in a deep and dark nest, it can feel its way as accurately as the finest and most delicate finger could. Almost all kinds of birds build their nests with materials found where they inhabit, or use the nests of other birds; but the swallow of Java lives in rocky caverns on the sea, where there are no materials at all for the purpose of building. It is, therefore, so formed as to secrete in its body a kind of slime with which it makes a nest, much prized as a delicate food in Eastern countries.—BROUGHAM'S 'Objects, Advantages, and Pleasures of Science.'

THE VOICE OF NATURE TO MAN.

Go, from the creatures thy instructions take;
Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield;
Learn from the beasts the physic of the field;
Thy arts of building from the bee receive;

Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave;
Learn of the little nautilus to sail,

Spread the thin oar, and catch the driving gale.
Here too all forms of social union find,

And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind :
Here subterranean works and cities see;
There towns aerial on the waving tree.
Learn each small people's genius, policies,
The ant's republic, and the realm of bees;
How those in common all their wealth bestow,
And anarchy without confusion know;
And these for ever, though a monarch reign,
Their separate cells and properties maintain.
Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state;
Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate.
In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw,
Entangle justice in her net of law,

And right, too rigid, harden into wrong,

Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong,
Yet go! and thus o'er all the creatures sway,
Thus let the wiser make the rest obey;
And for those arts mere instinct could afford,
Be crowned as monarchs, or as gods adored.

POPE.

NOTHING is useless in vegetable nature. Even the thistles we despise and eradicate, the dandelions which we ridicule, the nettle which we dislike, and the rush we undervalue, all are convertible into beneficial uses. They have all, in some age or other, contributed to human comfort or convenience. The Dutch apply still the various parts of the nettle to many purposes. The most intellectual of our arts, which gives to ideal beauty a visible form, is greatly indebted to botanical productions for some of those pleasing colours which embody its conceptions. From them also many valuable dyes are obtained, and more are yet attainable by persevering experiment.

Even the vegetation of the marshes, though unfit for alimentary herbs or for habitation, becomes serviceable by the turf which it produces, and is always renewing as it is removed for domestic comfort. The maritime plants assist some portions of mankind with food and medicine, and materials for manufacture. The lichens' likewise extend similar utilities to society; the fungi, though deleterious when unwisely applied, yet have properties that are available to medical skill; while ferns are not less auxiliary to our use and comfort. Such benefits and beauties have made botany an interesting study, even to nations where we least expect to find any of the paths of science either esteemed or pursued.

These unexhausted utilities, enjoyed and derivable from all the vegetable kingdom, are another proof of the munificent philanthropy which prevailed in the creation of our globe; for they are so profusely bestowed, that we now disregard a large portion of plants of important usefulness, because we have found and obtained from other countries those which we deem preferable, or have improved into a superiority. For it is another expressive indication of the foreseeing and provident benevolence of our Grand Originator, that he has made the most useful trees and plants transferable from one region to another. It is from this property in them that we now produce many of our valued trees and flowers, and most gratifying luxuries of fruits and herbs. What pleases in one climate is transplanted into another, and successfully naturalized there.—TURNER'S ' Sacred History.' 1. Lichens are plants of a very low | The reindeer moss and the Iceland moss organization, which grow on the bark of are capable of sustaining life either in trees or rocks, or upon the ground. They animals or man. abound in the cold parts of the earth.

IN numerous passages of Scripture, there is ascribed to the Almighty, in the great work of creation, the exercise of faculties and powers analogous to those which we are accustomed to associate with the operation of our bodily organs.

We read that in the beginning, when the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, the voice of God was heard in the stillness of the universe, and there was light; and it was divided from the darkness. Every subsequent act of creation was accompanied by a command, and their names, declared by the voice of God, were re-echoed from the firmament of heaven, and from the dry land, and from the gathering together of the waters. (Gen. i. 8, 10.)

We are ourselves said to have been the work of God's hand, by which we were fashioned as clay by the hand of the potter (Is. Ixiv. 8), and clothed with skin and flesh, and fenced with bones and sinews. (Job. x. 11.)

He is represented to have measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and to have builded up the world as an architect. Every house is builded," saith the Apostle, "by some man; but he that built all things is God." (Heb. iii. 4.)

His eye is said to look to the ends of the earth, and see under the whole heaven (Job xxviii. 24), and to have seen our substance yet being imperfect. (Ps. cxxxix. 16.)

His ear is described as open to the cry of the righteous (Ps. xxxiv. 15); and when he planted the ear, he is said to have heard. Nevertheless, God is a spirit. (John iv. 24.) He is invisible; whom no man hath seen at any time, nor can see at any time neither hath any man heard his voice at any time, or seen his shape. (Heb. xi. 27; 1 Tim. vi. 16; 1 John xviii. 37.)

Having no corporeal parts, or bodily nature, it is impossible to associate his actions with the operation of any bodily organs. It may be, that terms expressive of these actions are used in Scripture only in a figurative sense from a necessity of our ignorance, and, as it were, in compassion to it,-actions of a like kind with those we ourselves perform being the only ones of which we can as yet conceive; or, it is possible, that the actions ascribed to him are strictly such as we are accustomed to associate with the words used, only separated from those bodily organs through which we perform them.

May we not venture to speculate so far as to assume that the second of these suppositions derives an independent probability from that image and resemblance in which man was originally created to God, and which is to be traced in a corresponding resemblance between God's works in creation, and the works of man --between nature and art? a relation of qualities alike in kind, although infinitely removed in degree; the resemblance of that which is infinitely weak and imperfect, to that which is infinitely powerful and perfect.

If thus it be, how wonderfully is art elevated by the reflection that it is but nature on a diminished scale, and operating with a less perfect skill; a thing done by a creature of God-a creature made in His own image, and operating upon matter governed by the same laws which He, in the beginning, infixed in it, and to which he subjected the first operations of His own hands-a creature in whom is implanted reason; but as the feeblest ray in comparison with the whole light of the sun, but still of a like nature with that by which the heavens were stretched forth; living power as that of a worm, and as a vapour that passeth away, but an emanation of Omnipotence; a perception of beauty and adaptation infinitely removed, but a kin to that whence flowed the magnificence of the universe; and to control all these a volition, whose freedom has, with an inconceivable separation, its analogy, and, afar off, its source in that of the first self-existent Cause.

How full of dignity is the thought that, in every exercise of human skill, in each ingenious adaptation, in each complicated contrivance and combination of art, there is included the exercise of faculties which, though separated by an infinite interval, are yet allied to those in the operation of which creation had its birth! And how full of humility is the comparison which, placing the most ingenious and the most perfect of the efforts of human skill by the side of one of the simplest of nature's works, shows us but one or two rude steps of approach to it! How full, too, is it of profit and instruction to see God thus in everything around us, in every object of art as well as in nature-to find Him working with us in the daily operations of our hands, wherein, under different and infinitely inferior forms, we do but reproduce His own delegated wisdom and creative power! A man may thus sanctify the daily exercise of his mechanical skill, hold converse with God as intelligibly in art as in nature, and live under as open a manifestation of His presence in his workshop as when he goes forth among the green fields and upon the hills. And when he thus reflects on the manifest but infinitely remote analogy of his physical and intellectual nature to that of Him in whose image he

was made, can the contrast of his moral nature escape him? Can he but reflect that, with all this dignity of the intellectual and physical being, there must once have corresponded an equal standard of the moral being? that, with all these faculties for the recognition and worship of God, there must once have united a corresponding elevation of the religious being ?-MOSELEY'S "Astro-Theology.'

WHEN I am in a serious humour, I very often walk by myself in Westminster Abbey; where the gloominess of the place, and the use to which it is applied, with the solemnity of the building, and the condition of the people who lie in it, are apt to fill the mind with a kind of melancholy, or rather thoughtfulness, that is not disagreeable. I yesterday passed the whole afternoon in the churchyard, the cloisters, and the church; amusing myself with the tombstones and inscriptions that I met with in those several regions of the dead. Most of them recorded nothing else of the buried person, but that he was born upon one day and died upon another-the whole history of his life being comprehended in those two circumstances, that are common to all mankind. I could not but look upon these registers of existence-whether brass or marble-as a kind of satire upon the departed persons, who had left no other memorial of them but that they were born and that they died.

Upon my going into the church, I entertained myself with the digging of a grave; and saw in every shovelful of it that was thrown up the fragment of a bone or skull-intermixed with a kind of fresh mouldering earth, that some time or other had a place in the composition of a human body. Upon this, I began to consider with myself what innumerable multitudes of people lay confused together, under the pavement of that ancient Cathedral; how men and women, friends and enemies, priests and soldiers, monks and prebendaries, were crumbled amongst one another, and blended together in the same common mass; how beauty, strength, and youth, with old age, weakness, and deformity, lay undistinguished in the same promiscuous heap of

matter!

I know that entertainments of this nature are apt to raise dark and dismal thoughts in timorous minds and gloomy ima